Images and Sounds from Istanbul

Month: October 2014

This is a piece from an art installation at Arter Space for Art in Istanbul. The exhibit is The Roving Eye: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia. The piece is by Singapore artist Lee Wen. From the notes: “…a participatory and performative piece that brings together audience action, time and space…a formal and conceptual subversion of ping-pong…an extension of the dialogue between insider and outsider perspectives on identity.” More about Wen here.

This is the interior of the Yeni Camii, or New Mosque, around dusk. It is hardly new, as construction was completed about 1665. Here you can see the main dome and three of the four semi-domes that surround it (the main dome is more than 100 ft high… it is impressive). There are 66 domes and semi-domes in this mosque. The inside of the mosque is thick with Iznik tiles (but not nearly as thick as in the Rüstem Paşa Camii). The exterior looks like this.

This is a shot of the dome of the ablution fountain in the courtyard and several smaller domes on the mosque.

This is the interior of the stunning Yenişehir Çarşı Camii. It is on the same street as the Tarlabaşı Pazar (‘çarşı’ means shopping district in Turkish). This mosque is brand new (about fifteen years old). Here is a look at the exterior (scroll down a bit). Here is an overhead view of the mosque and the neighborhood. It is not clear if it was part of the controversial urban renewal/gentrification plans afoot (which may or may not be proceeding, given Istanbul’s bureaucracy).

Here is a view of the back of the mosque from a side street for a perspective on the neighborhood.

Another weekly market, newly-discovered (by me, anyway), and only a twenty-minute walk to get to (up and down, naturally). This one stretches for several blocks, much bigger than the Oğuz pazar mentioned earlier. Produce, cheese, olives, clothing, shoes, housewares, fish (to cook and eat, as well as goldfish pets), honey, eggs, and much more is available. This audio is a condensation of vendor calls heard during a stroll through the market; the duration of the actual walk was much longer, of course. I particularly like the singing vendors. Tarlabaşı, a neighborhood in Beyoğlu is here. The neighborhood has an interesting history, which you can read more about here.

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